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<\/a>Fireflies dance along the Wood-Duck Way trail near Cedar Rapids, Iowa<\/p><\/div>\n
As someone who grew up on California’s Central Coast, I never experienced them as a child. I’d seen them in movies and read about them in books, but nothing prepared me for the first evening I watched dozens of tiny green lights drifting through the darkness. They don’t simply glow. They flash. Tiny green lanterns floating through the night.<\/span><\/p>\n Even now, in my second summer, I still find myself standing outside like a little kid each evening they appear. There is something almost magical about them. They make me feel as though I’ve stepped into the land of fairy tales and mythical beings.<\/span><\/p>\n It’s easy to see why so many people who grew up in the Midwest speak so fondly of fireflies. As someone seeing them for the first time as an adult, I understood almost immediately. There is something timeless about standing beneath a warm summer sky, watching tiny lights drift silently through the darkness.<\/span><\/p>\n Lifting off into the dark.<\/p><\/div>\n Today we understand a little more about these remarkable insects. That beautiful flashing light isn’t simply something pretty to look at. It is the firefly’s language. Those flashes are courtship signals. Each species has its own unique pattern of flashes. Males fly through the darkness sending out their signal while females wait in the grass or on low vegetation, responding only to the pattern of their own species. It’s a remarkable conversation taking place every summer evening, one that most of us never notice. When we see hundreds of tiny lights blinking across a meadow, we are witnessing<\/span><\/p>\n one of nature’s oldest mating rituals. The adult firefly may only live for a few short weeks, but those few evenings we spend watching them represent years of growth hidden beneath our feet.<\/span><\/p>\n Last summer, I spent several evenings trying to photograph them. Most nights found me standing at the ends of quiet country roads along the edges of pastures and fields, near creeks and drainage ditches, waiting for the sun to sink below the horizon. As dusk settled in, I watched the tiny insects climb to the tips of sedges, switchgrass, and bottlebrush. They would pause, flash their brilliant green light, and then lift silently into the air. Once airborne they were almost impossible to follow.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>This is my second summer living where fireflies are part of the landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>